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Fastest way to get files off a damaged RAID Mirror drive onto a new drive

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4wd:
Look here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx-40hz (August 11, 2014, 08:05 AM)
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I knew about that but not having used it I was unsure whether it covered the full range of RoboCopy's options, (of which there are lots ... and lots).

Looks like it does  :)

these days i use Macrium Free version for such things.-mouser (August 11, 2014, 08:30 AM)
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While I'd use AOMEI Backupper, Paragon HDM Pro, etc, the reason I mentioned Disk2VHD is that VHDs are natively supported by Win 7+, ie. Disk Manager->Action->Attach VHD

Come to think of it, instead of Disk2VHD you can use Disk Manager->Action->Create VHD (it's here in Win8, IIRC Win7 also had the facility).

Only downside to VHDs I can see is it's one humongous file.

Oh, I forgot to mention - once you've made a verified image, (and made a couple of copies), work with the image, not the actual HDD.

ie.

Make image, verify image, unplug HDD, copy image, mount image, copy files from mounted image.

This will hopefully leave the real HDD as a physical backup until all files have been copied and verified from the mounted image.

There is no "fast" way to get your only copy of important files off of a HDD, especially when it's a RAID HDD since it's probably the same model/age as the one that just died.  ;)

Stoic Joker:
Okay, so one drive in a mirrored set failed. Under ideal circumstances...that's what supposed to happen. One drive is mirrored (e.g. imaged) on the fly to another drive so if one fails, you still have a copy. Given the panicked - fire drill - tone, are we to assume there are no backups?

Personally, I would just go for the RAID rebuild...because it's just going to take a low level image of the source drive and lay it on the target drive. Doing a 3rd party image isn't going to gain or save anything at this stage, it's just going to add steps to the process. If the now - presumably - last copy/drive is going to fail during the imaging process...then it's going to fail during the imaging process ... How the imaging is done isn't the deciding factor.

If you have a hardware RAID controller, it should start doing the rebuild without needing to boot the OS. So letting it idle at a boot prompt (like F8) will take some of the IO "pressure" off the drive while it's rebuilding. But this assumes this isn't a mission critical system that a whole horde of people aren't waiting to get back into. Note, not all systems do this so check the documentation for your RAID first - Might not have hurt if you'd mentioned what you had above.

Go over the documentation for your RAID twice before initiating anything...then read it one more time to be sure. After that you just gotta grit your teeth and pick a button. First time I did a RAID rebuild I smoked half a pack of cigarettes in an hour ... Second time wasn't so bad.

Stoic Joker:
On a side note: the last time I XCopy'ed half a TB of files to preserve permissions (which was a week ago), it took about 15 hours to complete. And that was running between to VMs both of which were sitting on the same blazingly fast 8 disk RAID array.

40hz:
Not knowing anything about the situation, the OS, or the hardware, I can't suggest anything more than Stoic did above. I'd definitely try to get your mirror back first and then get a real backup procedure in place once you do. Because he's absolutely right. There's nothing you can do that will exercise the surviving drive less than a rebuild. A full file by file copy will definitely stress it more. So definitely re-establish your RAID. At least that way if the surviving disk goes west you'll have a good data copy on the new drive to work with. As was said, if the other drive is about to go, it'll go no matter what you do at this point.

Luck!

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